An electronic device heats up as electric current flows through the device and the heat must be dissipated or removed from the device to prevent overheating. Cooling the electronic device is important in order to preserve its functionality and efficiency. Traditionally, an electronic device is cooled through both conduction and convection. After the heat is conducted from an electronic device through a heatsink, the heat may be then dissipated through convection via a flow of air.
Conventional heatsinks require that a hole be drilled and tapped for each device that is to be mounted to the heatsink. Fastening devices in this method is labor intensive and prone to defects. Some methods have been devised to use clips for clamping the devices either individually or as a group. The clamps still require extra parts and added assembly time. Some heatsinks with an integrated clip have been used on smaller devices in the past, but they relied on a simple spring clip to hold them to the device. The spring clips provide a limited the amount of pressure that could be applied and caused the weight of the heatsink to be supported by the device leads. Because the device leads were supporting the heatsink, the size of these past heatsinks was fairly limited. Another design used previously had a wedge shaped opening and the devices were simply wedged into the slot. This wedge design had significant flaws. In a wedge design, if more that one power device to be cooled was located in the same slot and the device heights were not precisely the same, then one device would make contact with the heatsink first leaving the other device loose and susceptible to overheating.
In another past attempts to dissipate heat from an electronic device, U.S. Pat. No. 6,219,246 entitled “Heat Sink Apparatus” describes use of a removable user-operated cam actuator connected to a cam and spring clips to secure a single device slot. While this particular apparatus does provide heat dissipate to some degree, there are several shortcomings. The shape and position of the spring clips may cause heat transfer discontinuities similar to past designs. An electronic device may not be adequately cooled and as a result, this configuration risk overheating the electronic equipment. Additionally, the heatsink device contains a multitude of individual parts that may increase manufacturing and assembly costs.
In view of the foregoing, a heatsink apparatus that overcomes the shortcomings was needed.